Advanced Specialist, Solution Architect

Pearson•Bloomington, MN

3d•Remote

About The Position

As a Technical Architect for the ExamDeveloper product, you will own the overall system design and architecture for Pearson VUE’s SaaS tool for creating exams. In this individual contributor role you’ll be the visionary for future architecture state of ExamDeveloper and ensure that current work of the teams is aligned your architecture direction. You’ll spend most of your time on planning and design activities in close collaboration with other technical and non-technical people. ExamDeveloper is a web-based exam development platform that allows our customers to write, review and manage questions on their exams. ExamDeveloper is the leading web-based tool for creating tests to certify test-takers in the professional skills they require. Customers rely on ExamDeveloper to support their entire workflow around question writing, collaborative review, scoring, and test management. It is currently undergoing a significant modernization effort and there are constant opportunities to add value to this core Pearson VUE product. ExamDeveloper’s primary tech stack is .NET and C# on the backend and Angular on the frontend hosted in Microsoft Azure. You’ll work with containerized services and Microsoft SQL Server. Some of the work will involve .NET Framework 4.x and ASP.NET Web Forms as we are in progress with modernization. The majority of the development and QA engineers are consultants located in India. Because of this, clear communication (especially written) is important. There is a small team of USA-based employee developers. Support and leadership roles like Project Managers and Business Analysts are employees based in the USA.

Requirements

7+ years work experience as a software developer
2+ years work experience as a software architect
2+ years experience with Angular or similar front-end software frameworks (like React, Svelte, etc)
2+ years experience with C# or similar back-end languages
Experience supervising the work of technical staff either formally or informally
Bachelor degree in Computer Science, MIS, or equivalent technology discipline

Nice To Haves

Ability to produce technical designs and plans to meet business needs
Experience and knowledge of cloud providers’ capabilities
Relational databases
DevOps workflows related to cloud-based development and deployment
Experience in an Agile software development environment
Demonstrated technical leadership
Clear communication skills to various types of audiences
History of continuous improvement

Responsibilities

Create technical plans that provide for future development and operations of the ExamDeveloper product. Proactively work to anticipate and prepare for upcoming needs.
Lead the solutioning process to define and estimate the work required for upcoming features. Act to advance our business objectives from ambiguous high-level goals into specific achievable plans.
Review technical designs created by others for compatibility with current and future architecture direction.
Partner closely with business stakeholders to understand customer needs and incorporate their vision into your technical direction.
Act as a trusted driving force for achieving business goals.
Oversee the operational costs of ExamDeveloper to ensure that our resource usage (ex: Azure cloud costs) are optimal.
Set technical standards for the engineering teams together with the participation and engagement of senior engineers.
Socialize and explain your decisions to other architects, managers, and business analysts in the VUE Technology organization and beyond.
Build consensus for your technical vision, but also be open to competing points of view. Suggest and justify alternatives.
Collaborate effectively across many roles and across organizational boundaries.
Respond to technical needs and concerns from the engineering team and give clear explanations where necessary.
Communicate effectively at various levels of technical sophistication and understanding, from high-level explanations tailored to executives to “lines of code”-level explanations that junior developers can understand.
Participate in development and QA work in a limited way to maintain a connection and a strong understanding of the teams’ processes and challenges.
Coach other team members to help them grow and bring out their best work.
React to urgent Production issues as part of a group of rotating on-call engineers.